Older and Unthinking: The Grandmas at Yankee

The video above is not from the most recent arrests of elderly women at Vermont Yankee. It's about a year old, from the Rutland Herald covering the September 2009 arrests of the same elderly women at Vermont Yankee.

They were arrested again at Vermont Yankee just a few days ago. The Rutland Herald article describing the more recent arrests notes that charges are never filed. Some of these women have been arrested nine times at Yankee, without any charges as follow-up. The self-named "Raging Grannies" are okay with that. The Rutland Herald reported:

Nestel said she didn't at all feel frustrated by the lack of prosecution, and she said the act of civil disobedience was a profound experience for the protesters.

(Hattie Nestel is featured in the video above.)

By trespassing on the plant grounds, the older women play chicken with the guards, disrupt the plant, and make sure Vermont Yankee gets negative publicity. If a guard actually shot them, Vermont Yankee would get even worse publicity. It's a good thing the guards are well trained to safeguard the plant while avoiding the use of force. I know some people who work at the plant who might well say: "Oh, don't tempt me!"

However, the protesters do have a profound experience when they protest. That's got to be worth something.

Older But Not Wiser

If the plant and the prosecutor feel like pressing charges, I think they should press charges. If they decide that pressing charges will just clutter up the court system, they shouldn't press charges.

However, as a grandma myself, I believe very strongly that this decision should be made without respect to the age of the law-breakers. I don't believe people should get a free pass to disobey the laws because they are older. If I broke a law, I would expect Bad Things might happen to me. If I broke laws repeatedly, I expect that Bad Things (like jail time) would certainly happen to me.

I learned cause and effect about law-breaking back in civics class, in sixth grade. They didn't have these new-fangled horseless carriages back then, but us kids really learned.

Oh. Okay, I'm not that old. I'm basically a Boomer.

My opinion. Trespassing and tempting people to shoot you is not funny. I think that someone should bring charges. Let's not have a tenth set of arrests and get-out-of-jail-free cards.

Zirconium and the Future: Why Research is Important

An Expected Ruling

On Friday, August 6, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) turned down a request for enforcement against Vermont Yankee by the New England Coalition (NEC). In June, the NEC had asked that Vermont Yankee be required to operate its core at a much lower temperature. The NEC claimed that zirconium alloy (zircaloy) cladding is a fire hazard at Vermont Yankee's current operating temperatures.

Why all the concern about zirconium cladding? Fuel pellets are made of oxides (mostly uranium oxide) and can't burn. However, the fuel pellets are encased in zircaloy, which is metallic. Metals don't generally burst into flame. However, unlike oxides, metals can burn. So it is reasonable to be concerned about the temperature at which zircaloy will burn.

The NRC regulation for maximum temperature of light water reactor fuel cladding is 2200 F, while Vermont Yankee plant operates at 2060 F or below. However, NEC asked the NRC to rule that Vermont Yankee must operate with fuel cladding temperatures no higher than 1700 F. Naturally, the NRC turned down this request. No reputable regulatory agency is going to tell a plant that is in compliance with regulations: "Sorry. You think you are in compliance, but you aren't in compliance. We have changed the regulations and made them far stricter, just for you."

Besides being unfair, this would be a great way for a regulatory agency to get itself sued. Of course the NRC didn't do this. After several conference calls with people from NEC, the NRC sent NEC a letter basically saying: No. We're not going to tell Vermont Yankee to operate at a lower temperature. Your concerns are more generic than anything specific to Vermont Yankee. Your concerns will be forwarded to our area for general rulemaking.

You can download the letter the NRC sent NEC here, and also read the Brattleboro Reformer article on the ruling.

But Wait, There's More!

The request above was specific to Vermont Yankee. It was filed by NEC in June of this year, and turned down at the beginning of August, as described above.

However, there was an earlier request by Mark Leyse, a nuclear engineer and the son of Robert Leyse, also a nuclear engineer. Mark Leyse lives in New York city. Mark Leyse has made many requests to the NRC for re-evaluation of safety measures. He is particularly concerned with fuel cladding, apparently believing that the NRC has ignored his father's research results on this issue.

Mr. Mark Leyse's November 2009 request for lower temperature operation of all reactors has become an NRC rulemaking docket. Leyse's November 17, 2009 petition to the NRC is the first item in this docket. Leyse claims that oxidation of cladding became a self-sustaining reaction at around 1800 degrees, and that the NRC has ignored this situation for forty years. In the petition asking for rulemaking, Leyse quotes his father's test results from forty years ago. Mark Lesye includes a letter from his father Robert Leyse about tests dated 1970 on pae 116 of his petition. Throughout the petition, Leyse also extensively discusses the test, Flecht Run 9573, reported in 1973. (For simplicity, I am referring to these references as "forty-year old data." Strictly speaking, some of the quoted data is only thirty-seven years old.)

The consequences of all this, as always, are assumed to be dire. Here's a quote from the Rutland Herald article:

The NRC earlier in spring had already agreed to consider the matter raised by Mark Leyse of New York City, but in a review track that will take years, not months. The New England Coalition wants the margin of safety increased immediately.

Leyse and Raymond Shadis, senior technical adviser to the coalition, say Vermont Yankee’s peak cladding temperature of 1,960 degrees Fahrenheit only gives the plant operators 30 seconds to react during a loss-of-coolant incident scenario.

Thirty seconds. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? And "takes years, not months" sounds perfectly awful.

But Wait, There's Less!

I decided to review Mr. Leyse's letter, because I couldn't figure out some of the comments in the press. What does reactor operating temperature have to do with loss-of-cooling accidents (LOCA)? Of course, to some extent, a hotter reactor is slower to cool, but everything about a LOCA analysis is built with huge margins of error. And how could forty-year-old lab data be ignored by everybody, when zircaloy must be one of the most-studied compounds in the world? Zircaloy it has been used for cladding since the very first reactors, and people have been studying it forever. Just Google "Zircaloy" to see the endless lists of papers and references.

And, of course, my major question. If zircaloy bursts into flame in water above 1700 Fahrenheit, and reactors routinely operate at 1900 Fahrenheit, how come they haven't all burned up already?

I reviewed the document to the best of my ability, and I welcome comments that will improve my review. Here's my analysis, with some quotes from Leyse's letter to NRC.

The Leyse request doesn't just refer to the temperature at which zirconium might burn in water. Instead, it also says that the modeling of loss of cooling accidents, the flood rate of water into the core, and the Baker-Just and Cathcart-Pawel equations non-conservative for calculating the temperature at which an autocatalytic (runaway) oxidation reaction of Zircaloy would occur in the event of a LOCA. .....Additionally, it can be extrapolated from experimental data that, in the event a LOCA, a constant core reflood rate of approximately one inch per second or lower (1 in./sec. or lower) would not, with high probability, prevent Zircaloy fuel cladding, that at the onset of reflood had cladding temperatures of approximately 1200F or greater, from exceeding the 10 C.F.R. § 50.46(b)(1) PCT limit of 2200 F.

In other words, this is not just about zircaloy. In this petition. Mark Leyse claims that just about every model used in the nuclear industry is inadequate. Zircaloy properties, LOCA calculations, reflood calculations--all wrong. In 2002, his father, Robert Leyse, said the same thing. The elder Leyse petitioned the NRC for rule-making about the Baker-Just and Cathcart-Pawel equations and LOCAs, and the NRC found his contentions to be not scientifically valid and wrote him to that effect in 2005.

This latest contention by Mark Leyse is a replay of this 2002 petition by Robert Leyse. Unfortunately, the NRC cannot just say: "Hey, we did this before. These contentions were made in a petition in 2002, and we settled these points in a ruling in 2005." No, they have to look at it again. This gives the opponents of nuclear power the opportunity to complain that it takes the NRC three years to look at anything.

Conspiracies Not Research

Robert and Mark Leyse seem to believe that all the research that has been done over the past forty years on LOCA modeling, zircaloy properties, and pretty much everything else....is part of a vast conspiracy to provide just the results the utilities want. The Leyses, and the Leyses alone, have the real facts, the true equations, the correct models. They discovered these "facts" forty years ago and have been ignored ever since.

I call this a conspiracy theory, decked out in scientific trappings.

Of course, once you buy into the idea that everything known about nuclear is wrong, then you can come up with scenarios where the entire core bursts into flame in thirty seconds and there is nothing anybody can do about it and so forth. This plays well with the anti-nuclear groups.

It doesn't play well with me. In science and technology, everything builds on what has gone before. Even the Einstein's famous breakthroughs were built on the past. He reviewed experiments that could not be explained without new ways of thinking about the speed of light. Einstein was attempting to explain the very latest experiments when he wrote his breakthrough papers.

I've done research, supervised research, and I deeply value research. Conspiracy theories that decide to ignore forty years of research should be called exactly what they are. Conspiracy theories.

I prefer science.

Update: NRC review of CORA tests, interim ruling now available here. Simplistic summary of NRC ruling: these results are in line with our other tests, and no rule changes are necessary.

Zirconium rod (not zircaloy) from Wikimedia.

Prosperity for Rich Folks

Prosperity (and Electricity) for Rich Folks

Morality for Beautiful Girls is the title of a book in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. The title raises all kinds of intriguing questions: Is it harder for beautiful girls to be moral? Do beautiful girls need morality? Why would morality be different for "beautiful girls" than for anyone else?

Similarly, the question of electricity use in prosperous nations raises questions. The curve of kilowatt hours versus dollars per capita is pretty straight for at the lower levels of both (below $15,000 a year per capita and I recently blogged this in Why I Love Nuclear. I explained the need for more electricity use, especially in poor countries. Prosperity and electricity improve people's lives, especially the lives of women. Near the same time, Rod Adams did an excellent post about energy and prosperity, and my own post received many thoughtful comments. I was happy to see that all the comments agreed with the necessity of improving lives in poor countries with electricity.

However, us rich folks in the U S were another story. Maybe we need to use less electricity, not more? It's possible.

Are Rich Nations Wasteful Nations?

Let's look at two opposing views. Friend2all posted these comments on my blog post:

There is a large and even dominant segment of opinion that places as first priority item in energy policy the objective to strive first for energy efficiency as the lowest hanging fruit in a plan for providing energy for America's future.......

The method commonly proposed to reduce the use of energy presently is to increase the cost of energy .... Our slide would suggest that the unintended result of increasing the cost of energy, and thereby decreasing the use of energy, is a shrinking economy and a lower GDP per capita.

The consensus view is that the less painful way to get America out of its economic problems is to grow the economy.

However Karen Street posted this opposing view (Ms. Street blogs at A Musing Environment):

However, there is another thread about energy use important to acknowledge: a lot of behavior in the wealthier countries is conspicuous consumption--larger cars and appliances than needed, leaving stuff on when it isn't being used, driving when we can walk. This is true for both rich and poor first worlders....

The poor deserve access to clean energy.....

I add this because it can sound as if people advocating for the poor are also advocating for my right to waste. A lot more people will agree with you if you make this point.

So there we have it. Does America need more energy, or should we learn to make do with less, and be less wasteful?

This is mostly a philosophical question, and so I will approach it philosophically. What kind of country do we want?

A Short Punt with Uncomfortable Facts

Before I start philosophizing, however, I want to point out that America's energy infrastructure is aging, and power plants need to be replaced and expanded, just to keep the energy use we have now. As CNN reports, blackout rates are skyrocketing in many areas of the country. Since building power plants is not easy to arrange, many people hope that the Smart Grid will be able to levelize use instead.

Just as an example of aging infrastructure: According to CNN, Japan averages four minutes of power outages per user per year, not counting weather-related disasters. For the Midwest, that number is 92 minutes, and for the Northeast (my home) the number is 214 minutes. (Thank heavens, Vermont Yankee has a capacity factor of over 90%, and is mitigating this problem.)

A utility executive from Austin Texas was quoted in CNN: High-tech manufacturers want to locate their factories in places where electricity is most reliable, said Carvallo. "That's where the manufacturing facilities move to. That's where you get your high-paying jobs."

Jobs are important. America is hurting in terms of jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports (August 6) that 14.6 million people are currently unemployed, of whom 6.6 million are long-term unemployed (more than 27 weeks). Most people agree we could use some job growth in this supposedly rich country of ours. I would be happy to see growth in electricity use, if that will help.

Now, back to morality.

What Is Waste? What is Philosophy? What is the Good Life? Etc.

First, let's distinguish between efficiency and waste.

Efficiency is always good. I am on the Energy Committee for my town. We sponsor weatherization workshops, and we have encouraged the recent installation of LED traffic lights. We are moving toward LED street lights, too.

Efficiency of energy use is always good, and should be encouraged. Making the same product (a warm home, a well-lit street) with less input is always a Good Thing. On the other hand, efficiency often pays for its capital cost fairly quickly, so even in a complete free-market economy, Efficiency Happens. Efficiency is a practical issue, but not a moral one (in my opinion).

Waste

Waste is a moral issue, and Karen Street is concerned with the idea that I am encouraging a right to waste. Alas. I am. I don't like to legislate morality with taxes, scarce supply, etc. And I believe that every good thing will be misused by someone.

For example, I will have a glass of wine with dinner, and someone else will drive drunk. Since some people abuse alcohol, should we bring back prohibition? I don't think so. It didn't work the first time. People have free will, and people abuse all sorts of things. Energy is no different.

Also, I am not nearly as certain that I know what waste is and what waste isn't. Maybe I am mellowing out.

For example, I personally dislike SUVs and think nobody needs a car that big. However, I know sincere moms who feel it is far safer to drive kids around Vermont winter roads in a BIG car. They have made a safety assessment, and are willing to pay more for the car, and more for gas, for their kids' safety. Is their choice reasonable? Maybe. Shall I despise these women as energy abusers? I don't think so.

Or let's take smaller refrigerators. I find it amazing and annoying that so many people keep a spare refrigerator humming all the time out in the garage. These refrigerators are filled with beer and soft drinks. By golly, such things should be banned!

Or should they? Should we all be mandated to have small, European-style refrigerators? Many European housewives shop regularly, several times a week, which is adorable and a lovely life-style--unless you are person like me, who combined housewifery with responsible jobs. I couldn't possibly shop so often.

When I was working, I loaded up on groceries once a week, sometimes twice. In other words, my choices involved a big refrigerator and a station wagon. A big refrigerator meant I could have two kids and a career. If no "American-size" refrigerators had been available, it would have been very hard for me to work.

In other words, I wish people were more mindful, less wasteful, and generally all-around better. But I respectfully disagree with Karen about too-big appliances, too-big cars, and so forth. I think these can be reasonable choices.

I am advocating for her right to waste. Even in rich countries, abundant energy gives people more choices, including the choice to drive an SUV and have a fridge full of soft drinks in the garage. Some people use those choices "wastefully" in my opinion. They might well think the same of my choices.

Abundant energy means freedom of choice. Especially for women. Even in a rich country.

Sidebar: Meredith Being Really Really Snotty

My husband is a man of firm opinions, and one of his firm opinions is that he did not want a TV set in his house. In forty years of marriage, we have never owned a TV. However, we bought a set to watch movies on DVD, and we enjoy them.

So, from my point of view, TV is all a big waste. All those stations burning kilowatthours to transmit stupid pictures of disasters and The Biggest Loser. Who needs it? I don't. Talk about wasteful!

I agree with the Oompah Loompahs on this. (In the video link, the Oompah Loompah views of excessive TV watching starts after about two minutes.)

I have added this this rant to prove that dissing people's "wasteful" choices is a bad idea. You diss my refrigerator, I'll diss your TV. This kind of acrimony is not a good way to celebrate diversity. We all deserve the freedom to choose the lifestyle that reflects our hopes and values.

So, let's not go around saying "wasteful, bad girl, wasteful." Let's just have lots of clean energy instead. From nuclear, of course.

Prosperity graph courtesy of Robert Hargraves. LED traffic light from Wikimedia Commons.

Energy, Prosperity, the Carnival and the Internet

The Importance of Energy to Prosperity

Yesterday, Rod Adams posted Power, Defined as Energy per Unit Time, Correlates to Prosperity. His post has a different slant than my post of two days ago: It's the Energy. Why I Love Nuclear. Our two posts make good companion pieces, and I especially like Rod's link to an IEA webpage with excellent graphics showing how people move from poverty to prosperity with energy use. The comments on his post are terrific. As always.

Meanwhile, the It's the Energy post is gathering comments and notice. A thank you and tip of the hat to Nuclear Townhall for listing the post among Best of the Blogs.

I also encourage you to explore the Nuclear Townhall site. The Townhall interview with Mr. Anti-Nuke and Anti-Global Warming, Joe Romm is particularly interesting. Last I heard Romm speak (at Dartmouth), he was against nuclear partially because it uses cooling water, and he was in favor of solar thermal, despite the fact that solar thermal also uses cooling water. Further, solar thermal works best in deserts where (surprise!) cooling water is in short supply. In the Nuclear Townhall interview, Romm seems to have joined the natural gas bandwagon instead.

The 13th Carnival Of Nuclear Energy is up at Next Big Future. It includes my post (as above) and a link to a post about a nuclear plant in China going on-line ahead of schedule, pictures of plasma in the fusion project at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and more. Visit the Carnival!

Off Topic: Our Daughter and Internet Tracking

Our daughter Julia Angwin, is a Wall Street Journal tech editor. She just finished spearheading a major WSJ investigative project on "What They Know." This project explores what Internet marketers know about you. I thought I knew about cookies. I mean, who doesn't know about cookies? I was wrong. Third party cookies, hundreds of cookies downloaded from a single web site, websites that don't even know how many third party cookies they are downloading, companies that help websites track how many third party cookies they are downloading, beacons that track your keystrokes. A whole world I didn't know about.

As the first article in the series points out: the new internet gold mine is your information. The WSJ web site for the project has databases and interactive graphics so you can explore your own experience. Visit it and have fun.

A bipartisan congressional committee is now investigating on-line tracking.

It's the Energy. Why I Love Nuclear.

To me, this graph is the Reason-For-It-All. My friend Bob Hargraves put it together, and you can find the graph on his website about the promise of thorium for the future (Aim High). To build this graph, Bob went to the CIA World Factbook, which lists countries and their statistical data: population, GDP, electricity use, life expectancy, etc. The factbook is the most convenient source of information for many countries and used in many academic and scholarly papers. (Note, double-clicking on these graphs will enlarge them.)

Bob constructed a spreadsheet of GDP per capita and birthrates per woman for 82 countries. He used the countries that have populations of over ten million people. The results are shown above. Simply put, women in poor countries have terrible lives. Many children, many children dying, little opportunity for education, grinding poverty. Prosperity (being above the "prosperity" line in the graph) improves women's lives immensely.

The next chart shows another of Bob's graphs. This one illustrates how electricity use and prosperity go hand in hand. Since it does not show that prosperity depends on electricity use or vice versa, no doubt, a few hundred people will now comment on this post that we can have plenty of prosperity with low electricity use. They may also ask: What is prosperity good for anyway? I have an answer for that. Prosperity is good for making people's lives longer and richer, and allowing women to participate in the greater business of the world.

The fact is: prosperity and electricity use go together. As you can see, prosperity and electricity increase together on average as a straight line, especially in the 0 to $15,000 per capita region. That region on the chart below is equivalent to the the Up From Poverty region of the chart above.

That's why China and India are moving so quickly on electrification.

A View from the Third World

Recently, I posted about Jaczko coming to Brattleboro, and Claire sent a long comment about all the ways we can conserve, and lead to a world which is carbon-free and nuclear free. Her aim was to have households using just a few kWh a month. Some ideas were rooftop solar collectors and organic gardens on the lawn. She received interesting replies.

Steve Aplin noted that:

Claire, I have no problem with your list of suggestions. Not everybody can follow them, however, and especially people who live in high rises. High rises are (1) absolutely the cleanest way for humans to live en masse, and (2) literally uninhabitable without electricity, which brings you to and from your floor, pumps your water, ventilates your unit, and lights it. We need lots of GHG-free electricity, and sorry but renewables are not capable of providing it.

Steve blogs at Canadian Energy Issues.

Dave then commented:

Is being low in energy use intrinsically good? If you think it is can you tell me if you also think that long life spans, education and generally health are good or evil?

I live in a second world country. I have great respect for how much energy it takes to supply a growing population. I know many people who live on less than a kwh a day. It is not pleasant and they struggle greatly. Some schools here only have light bulbs turned on if the parents in the community pay for the extra electricity. Then there is often a single light bulb in a classroom of 50 students.

This population that already uses less energy per capita than any of its still poor neighbors will not be helped by "green" energy. You cannot build an economy, (schools, jobs, roads, business, manufacturing) on sources of power that come and go randomly.

Most in this population cannot conserve more. They cannot "live with nature" more closely. Sure, pollution could be minimized, but not waste, there is NO waste, everything is used.

I include these quotes just in case you thought the Hargrave plots above were theoretical. They aren't. They are about real and suffering people

On the Other Hand

Some people don't care. Some people have furry mustaches and a down-home way of talking, and basically don't give a hang about people (probably people of color) living in other countries. Here are some quotes from people very opposed to nuclear energy.

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."

—Amory Lovins, The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22

Gosh, Mr. Lovins? Whose needs? Are you the one to decide on who-needs-what? Are we talking about your own needs (which include a certain amount of jetting around the world, giving highly-paid talks)? Or the needs of a third-world mother pregnant with her fourth child, who wishes she had clean water (water purification plants are energy hogs) and maybe even an electric stove (many many third world women die in accidents with small charcoal or wood-fired stoves, or from smoke inhalation. Full disclosure: as part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, our son-in-law Vijay Modi does research in the cookstove area.)

By the way, I found the Lovins quote in the Wikipedia article Anti-Nuclear Movement. Just in case you thought Mr. Lovins was talking about coal.

Another quote, from a somewhat less engaging personality:

Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. - Paul Ehrlich, ``An Ecologist's Perspective on Nuclear Power'', May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report

The condescension is so heavy you could cut it with a knife.

If you want to see some really vicious quotes, including banning DDT as a way to get rid of people by letting them die of malaria, I recommend this collection of quotes. The quotes were gathered by a retired professor at Stanford University, John McCarthy. Read it only if you have a strong stomach. (This website was recommended to me by a friend. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of all the quotes, but the author says he will take down any quotes that are challenged. I checked two of the quotes, and they were okay.)

The Bottom Line

Nuclear power truly has the ability to change the earth, and improve the lives of poor people and save the lives of women and children. There is really nothing else like it.

Let's ignore the Euro and America-specific rantings of certain condescending and overpaid people, and look at Bob Hargraves carefully drawn charts. If we look at those charts, we will see that answer for the world is MORE energy use, not less. And the answer for more energy use is nuclear.

That's what its about, for me. It isn't just about Vermont Yankee. I am committed to better lives for everyone, through nuclear power.

A Jaczko Retrospective

On July 14, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Dr. Gregory Jaczko, met with representatives of seven groups opposed to Vermont Yankee. The picture of the meeting (at left) first appeared on the front page of the NRC web site. It has subsequently been replaced with another picture.

In this picture, Dr. Jaczko is the man in the white shirt. To the left of him is Sandra Levine of the Conservation Law Foundation. The man with his hands in front of his face is Bob Bedy of the Safe and Green Campaign. Next to Bedy, the woman with long hair is Deb Katz of Citizen's Awareness Network.

Others who were invited to the table were Ray Shadis of the New England Coalition (NEC), Debra Stoleroff of the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance, Ed Anthes of Nuclear Free Vermont, and James Moore of VPIRG.

Those Not at the Table

Just behind Katz and somewhat to the left is Howard Shaffer. I am sitting next to Howard and appear slightly to the right of Katz. We weren't invited to speak to Jaczko. Others who were not invited to the table included the pro-business group Vermont Energy Partnership, and various individuals (such as the state representative from the town of Vernon) who had asked to meet with Jaczko.

As Rod Adams noted in a post, the NRC explained that Jaczko met with the opponent groups (which the NRC called "citizen volunteer groups"), members of the media, and the licensee. I gather that business groups (like VTEP) and elected officials (like the representative from Vernon) weren't people he wanted to listen to. Or, alternatively, they weren't his target audience.

Not at the Table, But Noticed

I would like to publicly thank Ray Shadis of NEC and Chad Simmons of the Safe and Green campaign for making thoughtful comments to me. I do not remember their words exactly, but they acknowledged that Howard and I also represented citizens, and said that if they had been in my shoes, they would have been offended at being excluded. This made me feel better about sitting in the peanut gallery. I appreciate their kindness.

What Happened at the Table

Nothing much. In an earlier post, I predicted that Jaczko would not have much chance to hold the floor, and he would be interrupted. I was right. Jaczko got very little airtime. The opponents spoke for approximately an hour at the beginning of the hour-and-a-half meeting, and when Jaczko spoke, he rarely was able to hold the floor for two minutes at a time before being interrupted. Howard Shaffer's guest post on this blog pointed out this phenomenon, and so the Burlington Free Press also noted that he was interrupted.

The opponents made statements that I found quite interesting and basically naive. For example, James Moore said “It is a zero tolerance for error game here.” This statement makes a good soundbyte, but what does it mean? I can't think of a single human activity (driving, building a house, parenting) that can exist on "zero tolerance for error." Apparently, Mr. Moore thinks it is a reasonable requirement for a business or industrial facility.

In terms of understanding the consequences of problems at nuclear plants, the crowd was completely in tune with anti-nuclear propaganda and conspiracy theories. I have noticed that people who believe conspiracy theories always feel they are far more sophisticated than those who do not believe such theories. I tend to see conspiracy theorists as less thoughtful than average. They are unwilling to listen to complex answers if they can find a scapegoat instead. As Nuclear Townhall wrote:

The key moment occurred, however, when Jaczko made the casual and seemingly indisputable remark that “what the offshore oil industry is going through now the nuclear industry went through thirty years ago at Three Mile Island – except there was no off-site damage.”...... (The crowd objected) “What about the radiation monitors that blew out!” “What about all those cancer studies?” They are all steeped in the lore that Three Mile Island was in fact a health catastrophe that has been diligently covered up by the powers that be.

Jaczko Holds His Own

Perhaps the most important thing that happened at the table was that Jaczko didn't give in to the opponents. He stated that he heard them, that he had many of the same concerns, but he had come to different conclusions. He did not see any reason to shut the plant down immediately. He didn't see the tritium leak as a reason to shut the plant down. He didn't see the NRC as slow-moving about safety issues. He listened, but he didn't agree.

All in all, I felt I could take lessons from Jaczko. He was practicing a textbook example of effective Assertiveness, the kind of thing they teach in Assertiveness Training. As a woman fairly up in my career in the late eighties, I took Assertiveness Training through my company HR department. (Didn't we all take it, in the 80s?) When you are assertive, you acknowledge your opponent's position--without agreeing to it or conceding.

Jaczko was a master at this. His message was simple: I hear your concerns. I acknowledge your concerns and have some of the same concerns myself. I don't agree with your conclusions, and will not take action based on your conclusions.

Jaczko could have taught the assertiveness course I took. Though they didn't give grades, I knew I was only a B-minus-type student when I took the class. If I could study a videotape of this meeting with Jaczko, I could learn and improve.

Entergy Awards and Steam Dryer Inspections

Steam Dryer Inspection Completed with New Robotic Tool

The steam dryer inspection has been completed. The steam dryer is doing well and in good shape. On the other hand, the rhetoric in the press looks like this: World Comes to An End. New Crack Discovered in VY Steam Dryer.

Vermont Yankee recently put into service an award-winning steam dryer inspection tool. This tool is unique to Vermont Yankee. As the NEI press release about the Vermont Yankee award stated:

Entergy Nuclear employees at Vermont Yankee are recipients of the Maintenance Process Award for developing innovative tooling for the inspection of a boiling water reactor steam dryer.

The tool has led to better inspection of the steam dryer (of course) and a lot of negative publicity for the plant (of course). The video below describes the new tool and the award.

Steam Dryer Inspections at Vermont Yankee

In July, Entergy reported the results of using their new tool to inspect the steam dryer. I have uploaded their official report to the NRC and you can read it here. During this inspection, various indications within the dryer were assessed in importance. Some were uprated, more were downrated. (During inspections, results are called "indications" until one can assess whether they are cracks, some other type of flaw, or a bit of corrosion product sticking to the metal.) One crack was considered to have grown. The use of a new steam dryer inspection tool led to better results, and much reclassification of indications and cracks.

The bottom line was quite clear. On the last page of the inspection report, the conclusion states:

The VY Steam Dryer inspection has been extensive and the results show that the dryer is in good condition...The improved inspection tooling provided higher quality footage of the dryer and provided a high level of confidence that the dryer is in good condition.

The improved inspection tooling at VY is the envy of other power plants. It had clearer results and led to a more accurate inspection of the steam dryer.

The Reaction to the Inspection

If you read some of the local papers, you would never know that VY has a new inspection tool, or that the conclusion of the inspection was that the steam dryer was in good shape.

The Time Argus described the indications and so forth fairly well, including good information on what a stream dryer is, and what it does. However, the short article ended with an ominous mention of pieces of the steam dryer falling into the reactor at other (un-named) power plants at (un-specified) times in the past. The article did not mention the new inspection tool.

Maybe the Times Argus didn't realize that a new inspection method is likely to give new and better results. Maybe they didn't notice the innovation-inspection award. Maybe they didn't understand that industry-wide innovation awards are a big deal, in every industry, and should probably be mentioned in articles that directly pertain to the subject of the award.

Entergy is setting the standard and getting awards for inspection methods, but the local papers haven't noticed.

Industry Awards

There is a constant drumbeat of comments that Entergy lies, Entergy doesn't care about maintenance, etc. I want to point out that last year, Entergy people at VY won the Maintenance Process award for their Steam Dryer Inspection tooling. This year, Entergy won the top industry award, the Best of the Best Award, for an innovative reactor head vessel inspection tool. From the May 2010 NEI press release about that award:

SAN FRANCISCO, May 19, 2010—Entergy Nuclear employees at the Palisades nuclear power station in western Michigan have been honored with the B. Ralph Sylvia Best of the Best Award for developing an innovative device that improves the inspection of reactor vessel heads.

My conclusion: Entergy is doing a great job building innovative inspection tools that are the model for the industry. It is about time they were given some credit.

Carnival Time Again!

The Twelfth Carnival of Nuclear Energy is posted at Idaho Samizdat, and Dan Yurman did a terrific job of choosing posts and describing them succinctly. Cheryl Rofer of Phronesisaical tackles the New York Times estimate of the amount of plutonium at Hanford, while Rod Adams of Atomic Insights encourages the New York Times to use some fact-checkers next time they estimate the cost of solar power. Barry Brook of Brave New Climate points out that if Climate Change is the Inconvenient Truth, than the inconvenient solution (inconvenient for people who have spent their life campaigning against nuclear power) is staring us in the face. It's nuclear.

Join the fun at the Carnival!

Addendum: Meanwhile, Green Mountain Daily Views with Great Alarm

The Green Mountain Daily (GMD) viewed the inspection results with great alarm. My friend Howard Shaffer attempted to explain what a steam dryer does, and his comments received the odd comment that it was good that he was no longer making threats against people. I think (not sure) that this "making threats" business comes from Shaffer pointing out that an earlier GMD post about me and Rod Adams could be considered libel. On the other hand, maybe something else Shaffer said was considered to be a threat. I can't keep up with the people at GMD. Everything that happens at the plant is a threat, and things Howard says or I say are threats. They live in a rather scary world over there.

Here's how Howard Shaffer answered these comments. He was very gentlemanly in his response. He was accused of "personal threats" and changed it to "personal attacks" when he answered.

I reread my earlier comments. I don't feel quoting someone or pointing out where their facts are wrong are personal attacks. For example, Mrs. Gundersen said at a public meeting at Vermont Law School that she believes the entire nuclear power industry should be shut down. I disagree with her on this national policy, but that is not a personal attack. It does give me insight into the actions her company takes, and those of her Chief Engineer.